Apple’s new $1,099 iMac is a MacBook Air in a desktop’s body

21.5-inch entry-level model saves you $200 but loses quite a bit of power.

The 2013 iMac isn't getting an upgrade—there's just a new cheaper, slower model in town.

Andrew Cunningham

Apple isn't upgrading the iMac family today, but it is making the family a little bigger. The company is now offering a new $1,099 entry-level model that includes most of the perks of the 21.5-inch model introduced last year—the same unibody aluminum enclosure, 1080p screen, port layout, 8GB of RAM, and 802.11ac Wi-Fi adapter—but takes a significant step backward with CPU and GPU speed.

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While the $1,299 model gets you a quad-core, 2.7GHz Core i5-4570R and Intel's best integrated GPU (the Iris Pro 5200), the $1,099 model comes with a dual-core 1.4GHz Core i5-4260U and Intel's third-best integrated GPU (the HD 5000). This is the exact same processor included in the speed-bumped MacBook Airs that Apple introduced in April.

That CPU can't be upgraded at purchase, nor can the 8GB of RAM Apple includes in the unit—the old 21.5-inch iMacs have two RAM slots that can be accessed by Apple repair shops or very careful, determined users, but we don't know if that will be true for these new models. Although the base clock speed looks a little low, remember that it can ramp up to 2.7GHz in Turbo mode and that a CPU in a big desktop will be able to sustain those Turbo speeds for much longer than a similar CPU in a little laptop.

You can still replace the 500GB spinning hard drive with something larger or faster. A 1TB hard drive will run you $50, while either a 1TB Fusion Drive or 256GB SSD will add $250. We recommend that all iMac buyers at least step up to a Fusion Drive if possible, since otherwise the 5400RPM hard drive serves as a significant performance bottleneck.

Those hoping for a faster, better iMac are going to be stuck waiting, and as we've discussed before, the main culprit is Intel's delay of its Broadwell CPU architecture. Those chips were supposed to be here by the summer, but the delay means that we won't get them before September, and it may end up being even later. Without new chips, Apple (and other PC OEMs) would have a hard time delivering faster machines.

For most people, we'd still recommend treating the $1,299 iMac as the entry-level model and sticking a Fusion Drive in it while you're at it—you get a better GPU, a significantly faster CPU, and the ability to upgrade to 16GB of RAM. Especially if you use your Mac for power-intensive tasks like Photoshop or video editing, you'll absolutely notice the difference. The new iMac will be appreciated more by people who just want an Apple all-in-one and don't really care about speed. This describes many casual users, as well as schools and businesses that deploy iMacs to end users and in computer labs.

Apple has a history of offering cheaper, cut-down iMacs to schools in particular, but this is the first time a similar model has been made available to the general public. It's the second time this year Apple has lowered the price floor of its Macs—when the MacBook Air got its speed bump earlier this year, it also got a $100 price cut. The difference was that you didn't have to give anything up to save that money, and this new iMac sacrifices enough performance that we'd think twice before recommending it.

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.